- Toddler
Emotion Color Wheel
Learning Areas:
- Art
- ECSEL
Overview
What is this activity?
ECSEL Standards
What skills are being enhanced? What knowledge is gained?
Materials
What do you need to prepare for this activity?
Instructions
Step by step guide
ECSEL Prompts
What questions can you ask to promote ECSEL thinking and discussions?
Extended Learning
How can you extend children’s thinking?
Overview
Colors can be frequently connected to our emotions – blue can represent sadness, while yellow can represent happiness. Let’s see what colors your students associate with different feelings with this fun Emotions Color Wheel!
ECSEL Standards & Learning Goals
What skills are being enhanced & what knowledge is being gained through this activity?
Emotional Identification
Children will begin to identify the emotions they feel when looking at different colors.
Emotional Understanding
Children will begin to understand their many emotions and what causes them in their environment.
Cause & Effect
Children will begin to understand which colors cause them to feel different emotions.
CASEL Standards
Materials
- ECSEL tool: Our Emotions Cards
- Color wheel or chart
(big enough for the class to see) - Paper/poster to write responses
Instructions:
- Gather your children at circle time. Hold up or lay out the color wheel/chart so everyone can see, and ask each child what their favorite color is. Write their responses down on the paper.
- Then, using Our Emotions Cards next to the wheel/chart (as visual support if needed), ask what emotion/feeling their favorite color makes them feel. Record responses next to their favorite color on the paper.
For younger children, emerging learners, or non-verbal students, you can have them point to their favorite color (with or without support), and the emotion card that matches how that color makes them feel. - Then, tell your children we’re going to play a feelings game with all the different colors on the wheel/chart!
- Hold up the color wheel and when you point to a color, ask the children to describe the way it makes them feel (cozy, prickly, or labeling their emotions).
For advanced children, extend their learning by asking “what about this color makes you feel that way?” to help with emotional understanding.
ECSEL Prompts
ECSEL Prompts are helpful questions & guiding statements you can use to provoke children’s thinking about emotions. These prompts are related to this specific activity.
How do you feel when you get to wear your favorite color? What about that color makes you feel special?
How does seeing the color blue make you feel? What about the color blue makes you feel that way? (Repeat this question with other colors.)
What else makes you feel happy? What else makes you feel sad?
Extended Learning
Use these questions & ideas to extend children’s learning!
What colors do we see in nature? What do those colors make us feel?
Read a picture book like The Color Monster by Anna Llenas to further illustrate the link between colors and emotions.
Toddler – Emotion Color Wheel